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Freud civilization and its discontents essay
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Freud civilization and its discontents essay
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We all have different opinions regarding civilization. There have been stories that view civilization from a pessimistic view or an optimistic view. A few we will be looking at are "Civilization and its Discontent" and "Epic of Gilgamesh" and the shift of perspectives towards civilization. From these two texts, "one can consider the fact that our attitude towards civilization is one of ambivalence" (SF).
In the book "Civilization and its Discontent," the author Sigmund Freud starts basically describing his point of view towards civilization. Civilization can be defined as a space of conflict, or as an extension into a cultural community of the tensions that stigmatize the individual psyche. Freud talks about how civilization caused humans
We see a shift from a pessimist view to an optimistic view towards civilization. The story starts off with a hunter seeing Enkidu and telling his father that he had seen a hairy-bodied man at the watering place. He mentioned that the man resembled the all powerful god of war Ninurta. Also, that Enkidu visited the watering place with the beasts while unsetting his traps and filling his hunting pits. As a result, the creatures of the grasslands always got away free because the wild man always set them free. Because of him the hunter no longer considered himself a hunter. The father was furious and, as a result finds a prostitute for the wild man(Enkidu). Then the father of the hunter tells the prostitute to show him her breasts which are considered "beauty". Through outrages phrases, the father basically tells her to put a blanket down and lay there and eventually the wild man will look at her. Then to show him her body and the wild man will come to her and lay down on her. After seven days of pleasure and sex, the man leaves to seek his animal friends. Once he finds them to his astonishment, they fled. He noticed that everything had changed, that his body that loved to run through the hills could not keep up anymore. He lost the speed he once had that was able to keep up with the animals. He then goes to talk to the prostitute and she convinces him to go with her to the city of Uruk. The next morning
She represents civilization, she civilized the wild man and, as a result, he was rejected by the animals. He also lost the speed and strength of the animals. Referring back to Civilization and its Discontent, civilization restrained the wild man from his natural desires causing him to not be free to do anything he wanted to do. He now had to wear clothes and not be naked. He had to eat specific food that satisfied him. Before he would eat what the animals ate. Before being civilized, he had little to no context of what fear of death meant. But that changed after having sex with the prostitute. When he finds out that one day he is going to die, he loses control of his emotions and experiences fear so the first
This short story is loosely a take on traditional rites of passages from european or Native cultures, in the sense that the young man must exert a fatal act on another being or animal as a part of the initiation into manhood. “For a people living in a new unsettled land, variations on the archetype of the young hero who achieves manhood by hunting and slaying a wild beast came early and naturally as a literary theme.”(Loftis 437) Dave is the
While the man is thinking about the wolf and the impact it had on its surroundings, he knows that many people would be afraid of the it. Realizing that something can be both “terrible and of great beauty,” the man's sense of awe is heightened. While laying under the moonlight, the man thinks about the wolf both figuratively and literally running through the dew on the grass and how there would be a “rich matrix of creatures [that had] passed in the night before her.” Figuratively, this represents the wolf running into heaven. However, the man imagining the wolf literally running and the beauty of her free movements across the “grassy swale” creates a sense of awe that he has for the wolf. A wolf running towards someone would be terrifying, but a wolf running with freedom is magnificently beautiful. After imagining this, the man knows that even though wolves can be terrifying, “the world cannot lose” their sense of beauty and
Webster's online dictionary defines civilization as "a society in an advanced state of social development". Without the restraints of society, the behaviour of people will regress to their savage beginnings, due to the fact that one's need for survival will overpower all other impulses. The descent into savagery, man's inherent desire to survive over anything else, and the need for civilization and order shows how society unnaturally holds everyone together. Society artificially bonds everything together by imposing rules and structures and without the reminders of civilization and its conventions the savagery of human nature emerges.
Enkidu, who is a mixture of human and wild animal, creates a journey for readers and touches on the essential question of what it means to be human, as well as the transition from being uncivilized to becoming civil. “While Enkidu was seated before her…Enkidu forgot about the steppe where he was born.” (The Epic of Gilgamesh 45) Gilgamesh sends the harlot Shamhat to Enkidu in order to civilize him and to coax him into becoming a companion for Gilgamesh himself. Shamhat then goes to sleep with Enkidu for six days and seven nights and persuades him into becoming similar to a god, or in this case, humanized. Eventually, Shamhat treats Enkidu to eat bread, “the staff of life,” and to drink beer, “the custom of the land,” causing Enkidu to become
The dictionary version of a civilization is “the stage of human social and development organization that is considered most advanced”. Although by scientific standards that is correct, there is much more that goes into civilization. Although every civilization has rules,standards, and laws they also give people a choice. In the American constitution, it states”certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” This may seem like a simple or meaningless satinets to some. But for me it means everything. It describes how as human beings, we have the right to choose. That one ability to pursue the thing or things make them happy is just as important as their right to be unhappy.
all the hunted animals convey connotations of evil, and this is doubtless the reason why the author of the poem seems so involved in the outcome of the hunts and never tires of triumphantly describing the final slaying of the pursued animals. (Howard 85)
The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest known stories, recounts the tale of the reckless King Gilgamesh and his adventures with his friend Enkidu, a natural man created by the gods from clay to humble and teach Gilgamesh to become a better ruler. Through Enkidu’s death, the once fearless Gilgamesh becomes fearful of his own inevitable demise and journeys to find immortality. However, by finding compassion for his humanity, he is able to come to terms with his mortality and continue living wholeheartedly as the ruler of Uruk. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh learns to accept his mortality by gaining compassion for himself.
In conclusion, “Civilization and Its Discontents” by Sigmund Freud was a book that sought to explain both organized religion and civilization in general. The book was largely influenced by the hostile environment of post World War I Germany and was a widely read and widely influential book.
Sigmund Freud, a psychologist and influential thinker of the early twentieth century, enumerates the fundamental conflicts between civilization and the individual in his writing, Civilization and its Discontents. He asserts that an individual’s primary discontent originates from civilization’s demand for conformity contrary to the individual’s search for instinctual freedom. Freud continues and postulates that the demands and laws forced onto the individual create the “super ego.” This super ego puts limits on one’s intrinsic desires and restricts them from pursuing different opportunities of happiness. Similar to Freud’s assessment of civilization, Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher and cultural critic, illustrates a similar evaluation on communal living in his major work, On the Genealogy of Morals. In this writing, Nietzsche begins to examine the origin and meaning of different moral concepts, starting with “good”, “evil”, and “bad.” In this process he states that noblemen defined these terms and that the people around them are you talking about the noblemen or people in general? influenced and ultimately determined what was “bad” or “good.” While both thinkers addressed several different concepts, they had similar views on the influence of civilization and the unintentional effects it had on the individuals living in that society. While both Freud and Nietzsche discuss the pow...
Civilization is not beneficial to humanity because the political leaders could abuse the general public, social barriers developed, and there were problems with agriculture.
A civilization is a society that has cities, skilled workers in different areas, institutions, a form of writing to keep record and technology that is advanced for the time.
A civilization to me is people in an area coming together and learning how to work with one another. As they learned new things such as how to grow more food, and skills that will make their everyday lives easier the population starts to grow. The way people could advance in one skill gave them the opportunity to trade with each other for other goods, allowing them to become more urbanized. Every civilization is unique in it’s own way, each having cultural diversity in their music, art, and building styles.
In Mesopotamian government, the King made the laws and told his people how to worship the gods. There was also a council of people who could overrule the law if they didn’t like it. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a good representation of the Mesopotamian government and religion. Gilgamesh was a male king and he received advice from a council of elders. The Mesopotamians believed that the gods were attached to natural occurrences and dreams. An example would be after Gilgamesh ripped out the bull’s heart and presented it to Shamash. Ishtar then placed a curse: "Woe unto Gilgamesh who slandered me and killed the Bull of Heaven! "When Enkidu heard this pronouncement of Ishtar, he wrenched off the Bull's hindquarter and flung it in her face: "If I could only get at you I would do the same to you! I would drape his innards over your arms!” (Sandars 1972, 147-157). This part of the poem shows the Mesopotamians were not just theoretically religious, but they also have their own personal relationships with these gods. The Mesopotamians befriended gods through rituals and became enemies with others if they disobeyed.
A civilization is the starting point of a society. Civilizations have existed for millions of years and are the basic unit of structure for a society. Civilizations were the base of great societies such as Egypt and Rome. If not for civilizations these societies would not have flourished or even existed.
The first of these different meanings of civilization came from French jurists of the 1560s, who began to classify people as “civilité” and civilisé” based on how different peoples were governed (Patterson, 29). Since that time, the term has expanded and has been used more and more to “other” people. This “othering” as a part of civilization “was forged in the context of European oversees colonial expansion…” and “was used by the elites…to distinguish themselves from the people they encountered” (Patterson, 30). In modern times, civilization is seen and taught to be “beneficial, desirable—and definitely preferable to being uncivilized” (Patterson, 1). Thomas Hobbes also weighs in on the civilization versus barbarism debate. According to one source, Hobbs believes civilization “has been a condition which combines government, leisure and intellectual cultivation” (Kraynak, 90). According to Huntington, “Civilization is not a thing: it is an idea, a concept, a way of organizing reality”(Patterson, 22). Huntington describes civilization as “the highest cultural grouping of a people and the broadest level of cultural identity…” (Huntington 43). According to him, many layers exist within a civilization, like customs, institutions, and religions. He also claims civilization should be inclusive not exclusive. This definition is very similar to the definition